New Rare Earth Minerals Deposit in Sweden

A Swedish state owned mining company, LKAB, announced last week that it had found Europe’s largest known deposit of rare earth elements. This discovery could reduce the continent’s reliance on China for this critical resource.

Importance of Rare Earth Elements

Rare earth elements are an essential group of 17 elements that reside near the bottom of the periodic table. They are in fact not that rare in terms of their abundance, but not found in concentrated amounts. While they are mostly used in trace amounts., their use spans across a range of industries as listed below:

Permanent Magnets: Rare-earth magnets are the strongest type of permanent magnets made, hence allowing a reduction the size and volume of the magnet in electric motors and generators. Neodymium (Nd) and samarium- cobalt are the two most commonly used. Electric vehicles (EVs) typically use Nd based permanent magnet motors. Dysprosium is also used to a smaller extent. Rare earth based permanent magnets are also widely used in magnetic separators, travelling wave tubes, computer disks, medical devices and satellite systems and cell phones.

Catalysts: Lanthanum (La) and cerium are used as additives for Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC), which is used in gasoline production. Their use can increase gasoline yield as well as reduce emissions in oil refinery. These have also found use in purification of industrial waste air and automotive emission control. Other more exotic uses include synthesis of single crystal diamonds.

Batteries: Hybrid gas/electric vehicles on many cars used nickel Metal Hydride (NMH) batteries, in which the negative electrode was made of a lanthanum penta-nickel (LaNiS) alloy. Electric vehicles (EV) now mostly use lithium (Li) based chemistries, which do not use rare earth metals.

Electronics: Nd and other rare earths used for the magnets contained in the speaker, microphone and vibration unit of cell phones. La used in phone screens makes the colors more vivid.

Defense and Aerospace: These applications range from missile guidance systems, radar and sonar systems, aircraft engines, infra-red absorbing glasses, etc. The high strength alloy that praseodymium makes with magnesium is used in aircraft engines.

Many other uses include making colored glass (praseodymium), glass polishing (cerium oxide), etc.

LKAB has identified more than one million tonnes of rare earth oxides in the Kiruna area which is located in the far north of Sweden, the company said in a statement. “This is good news, not just for LKAB, the region and the Swedish people, but also for Europe and the climate,” said Jan Mostrom, president and group CEO of LKAB.

Supply and Demand of Rare Earth Elements

The European Union currently gets 98% of these minerals from China, per the European Commission. As the world moves to greater use of EV’s and alternative energy sources such as wind, the demand for these elements is expected to surge, with estimates of a five fold increase in demand by 2030. Speaking at a press conference after this discovery, Sweden’s energy minister Ebba Busch said that the EU was “way too dependent on other countries for these materials” and said a change was needed.

Showing demand growth of rare earth elements for EV’s and wind turbines from 2010-2020 (from Sciencedirect.com)

Figure 1 shows the demand growth in rare earth elements over the 10 year period from 2010-2020 from just the demand increase in EVs and wind turbines. The overall worldwide value of the processed rare earth elements is estimated at around $ 8 billion, with a cumulative average growth rate (CAGR) expected to be over 9% for the period 2021 – 2030.

Figure 2: Geographic distribution of the supply and demand of rare earths, 2016 (from Foreign Policy 2016)

Figure 2 shows the supply and demand of rare earths by geography for the year 2016, highlighting the dominance of China in the production process.

Future Outlook

LKAB plans to submit an application for the permit to mine these deposits later this year. “If we look at how other permit processes have worked within our industry, it will be at least 10-15 years before we can actually begin mining and deliver raw materials to the market,” it said. 

While not radioactive, trace radioactive contaminants can occur naturally within the deposits, and difficulties associated with disposing of these has led to the shuttering of many rare earth separation factories across the world outside of China. LKAB is also the largest shareholder in REEtec, a Norwegian company that works on separation of rare earth elements. 

Source; powerelectronicsnews.com